Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

by Ann Schmiesing
Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales

by Ann Schmiesing

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Overview

Although dozens of disabled characters appear in the Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales, the issue of disability in their collection has remained largely unexplored by scholars. In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, author Ann Schmiesing analyzes various representations of disability in the tales and also shows how the Grimms’ editing (or “prostheticizing”) of their tales over seven editions significantly influenced portrayals of disability and related manifestations of physical difference, both in many individual tales and in the collection overall. Schmiesing begins by exploring instabilities in the Grimms’ conception of the fairy tale as a healthy and robust genre that has nevertheless been damaged and needs to be restored to its organic state. In chapter 2, she extends this argument by examining tales such as “The Three Army Surgeons” and “Brother Lustig” that problematize, against the backdrop of war, characters’ efforts to restore wholeness to the impaired or diseased body. She goes on in chapter 3 to study the gendering of disability in the Grimms’ tales with particular emphasis on the Grimms’ editing of “The Maiden Without Hands” and “The Frog King or Iron Henry.” In chapter 4, Schmiesing considers contradictions in portrayals of characters such as Hans My Hedgehog and the Donkey as both cripple and “supercripple”—a figure who miraculously “overcomes” his disability and triumphs despite social stigma. Schmiesing examines in chapter 5 tales in which no magical erasure of disability occurs, but in which protagonists are depicted figuratively “overcoming” disability by means of other personal abilities or traits. The Grimms described the fairy tale using metaphors of able-bodiedness and wholeness and espoused a Romantic view of their editorial process as organic restoration. Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales shows, however, the extent to which the Grimms’ personal experience of disability and illness impacted the tales and reveals the many disability-related amendments that exist within them. Readers interested in fairy-tales studies and disability studies will appreciate this careful reading of the Grimms’ tales.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814338421
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Publication date: 11/03/2014
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

Ann Schmiesing is associate professor of German and Scandinavian literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Norway’s Christiania Theatre, 1827–1867: From Danish Showhouse to National Stage.

What People are Saying About This

Vanessa Joosen of Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales (Wayne State University Press

Schmiesing successfully merges disability studies with fairy-tale studies and has produced a book that is relevant for students and scholars in both disciplines. Her combination of careful close readings of the tales with reflections on the Grimms' social and personal context is convincing and opens up new avenues for thinking about the content and the editorial process of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen. It has certainly given me a fresh perspective on certain fairy tales, and Schmiesing argues convincingly and in a sophisticated way about the social and narrative construction of disability in the tales.

John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Author of the Annotated Brothers - Maria Tatar

In Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Schmiesing locates the entire question of disability and prosthesis in a fascinating socio-historical context that enriches our understanding of the Grimms' tales in profound ways. It's as if someone had deftly rotated the critical kaleidoscope of the last decade to create a completely new picture of the cultural stakes in the Grimms' tales. A breakthrough work of fairy-tale scholarship.

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